1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a hand pattern switch device through which an operator inputs operation information to a controlled object, and more particularly, to a hand pattern switch device for enabling a driver to easily operate a vehicle-mounted equipment such as air conditioner equipment and audio equipment, without his/her driving being affected and without the need of touching an operation panel of the vehicle-mounted equipment.
2. Related Art
There has been proposed a technical art (for example JP-A-11-134090) to operate vehicle-mounted equipment such as air conditioner equipment and audio equipment without touching an operation panel of the vehicle-mounted equipment, in which an image of a body part (for example, left hand) of a driver is picked up by a camera and subject to pattern recognition to obtain information that is used to operate the vehicle-mounted equipment.
In another proposed technical art (for example JP-A-2001-216069), information used to operate vehicle-mounted equipment is acquired from a driver's gesture such as finger pattern and finger motion.
This kind of art, realized by the pattern recognition to recognize a shape or pattern of a palm, hand, fingers, or the like from a picked-up image thereof or realized by the motion detection to detect a motion of a palm, hand, fingers, or the like by tracing its positional change, is called as a hand pattern switch device in the present specification. Hereinafter, palm, hand, fingers, etc., are collectively referred to as “hand” unless otherwise particularly specified.
As mentioned above, a variety of auxiliary equipment such as audio equipment, air conditioner equipment, etc., are mounted in a vehicle. In addition, each equipment has various adjustment functions. For instance, vehicle-mounted audio equipment such as a radio broadcast receiver, tape player, CD player, etc., each have volume, channel selection, play, and stop functions. Air conditioner equipment has functions of adjusting temperature, wind volume, wind direction, etc.
In both the above-mentioned prior art examples, however, a variety of hand patterns are to be used each of which specifies a corresponding one controlled object, and another hand pattern is used to specify an amount of operation. Thus, an individual driver is required to memorize an extremely large number of hand patterns, and accordingly his/her driving may be hindered.
On the other hand, a hand pattern switch device is only capable of inputting pieces of information each of which is, in general, uniquely determined in accordance with what pattern is formed by a hand or in what way a hand motion is performed, or the like. This poses a problem in properly adjusting respective functions of various switch-operation objects.
Specifically, some controlled objects such as channel selection on radio broadcasting and wind amount are preferable to be subject to a large continuous/stepwise operation, whereas other controlled objects such as temperature and sound volume are preferable to be subject to a continuous fine operation.
Thus, it is preferable that switch-operation information to be input from the hand pattern switch device is made changeable in accordance with for example the preference of a driver or the controlled object, so as to improve operability of the switch device.
It is also important to enable a driver to use a hand pattern switch device, without extra load that may hinder his/her driving, when he/she inputs information to control the operation of vehicle-mounted equipment. Furthermore, it is of course preferable that the operation information can be input easily and appropriately in accordance with which vehicle-mounted equipment serving as a controlled object is to be operated.